Good morning all. If the news seems a little light today blame the Independence Day holiday in the US yesterday.

Day 3 of the Ultimate Game Sale is a pretty good one. Gears of War Judgment, Tomb Raider, BiosShock Infinite, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, Hitman: Absolution and XCOM: Enemy Unknown for at least 33% off. [via Major Nelson]

Microsoft is apparently planning a Gamescom press conference – a first for the company at the German event. Let the speculation of what they will be backtracking on commence… [via CVG]

Insomniac‘s Teed Price has backed up previous reports that Microsoft has removed developer update restrictions on the Xbox One. The move allows developers more freedom to update more regularly than was possible on Xbox 360. [via Game Informer]

A patch for XBLA game Fez is finally in the works. Developer Phil Fish confirmed via Twitter today, Fish announced, “Good news everyone: We’re going to patch FEZ on XBLA!” It appears that the policy change by Microsoft on the updating games on the Xbox 360 may have been the catalyst.

The next Games with Gold title on 16 July will be Assassin’s Creed II. Still not quite up to the PS Plus monthly menu of games, but better than Defense Grid…

EA‘s chief creative officer, Richard Hilleman has estimated that the number of current-gen Triple-A console studios is currently just 25 – a decline of around 80% since the start of the cycle. At the same time, the total number of people working on the titles is around the same as the beginning due tot the increase of team sizes needed for development. [via CVG]

Square Enix has released a new Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII trailer called “The Divine Task”. The game will be out on 11 February, 2014 in North America and 14 February in Europe on Xbox 360 and PS3.

A new video for another Final Fantasy game has also been released, this time for the MMO on PC and PS3 (monthly subsfrom £7.69 / €10.99) Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn.

A new producer interview for PES 2014 has been released.

Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 3 Full Burst will be coming to PC, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 this “Winter”.

Blizzard is considering micro-transactions for World of Warcraft. In fact there is a public test server currently running to – yip – test it out. [via CVG]

A new gaming headset developed by US company Foc.us Labs will fire electricity into your brain’s frontal lobe… in order to improve focus when gaming. Almost sounds like torture, however, this will “overclock your brain”, “increase the plasticity of your brain,” and “make your synapses fire faster.” Still sounds like torture. [via CVG]